in-fat-u-a-tion
by this is my pseudonym
Summary: There's a reason they say, "Never meet your heroes." He just didn't know that this was the reason why. Or maybe, Sod's Law being what it was, it was just him. Right after 'Girl in the Fireplace'. Angst, I'm not gonna lie - it's not pretty.
1. Chapter 1

Infatuation: a foolish, unreasoning, or extravagant attraction; an object of short-lived passion.

_"You knew her for less than a day, Doctor, an' all of a sudden she **'knows'** you? Are you sayin' that after everythin' **we've** been through together, everythin' we've **shared** wif each other, after everythin' I've **done** for you, that I **don't**?"_

The Doctor could only look at Rose, words lodged in his throat as her accusations washed over him, followed quickly by a shower of shame. Her face was blank, her eyes flat, but the Doctor could see, in every line of her body, the tense disappointment and hurt his implications had evoked. It wasn't what he'd meant, hadn't intended to belittle Rose's role in his life, but his mouth, so good with words at the most unimportant of times, had failed him now — in the most pivotal.

Silence engulfed them both as they stared at each other, Rose's words fading into the metalwork. Mickey had long since absorbed himself into the bowels of the TARDIS and the old girl herself quieted her hums, retreating from the two just as surely as Mickey had. It was just them ('better with two', he'd once said) with no help from any quarter; even-keel, Rose'd say, if… oh, just if.

In…fat…u…a…tion: short-lived. Quite right too. Reinette was dead and gone now, vanished from the earth as surely as if she'd never been. Gone, in the blink of an eye. He'd been

_captivated._

Glancing down at the dictionary in his hand, the Doctor noted, "Captivated, a synonym of 'infatuation', similar to captured, correlated to 'prison'. I should find that fascinating."

He didn't need to wonder why he didn't. The cavernous echoing of the TARDIS, the vague haunting of laughter in the halls, was answer enough.

_"Rose, she! She got inside my head! Waltzed right on in when I was looking through hers. She shouldn't have been able to do that. She **saw** me! The things I've done, the darkness in me… and she didn't even flinch. Can't you understand?"_

Rose shifted, her right hip hitching up as her left leg became her support, and a thoughtful (mocking) look flashed across her face. It chilled him down to his toes. Rose just wasn't that way.

"Oh, yes!" She released a harsh laugh, brittle and sharp, the spines digging deep into the Doctor's hearts, nearly stopping them in her agony. "She saw what you've done, she saw your pain. She saw everythin'! Perfec', wonderful, beau'iful Reinette! The Mos' Accomplished Woman in the World! She saw you, second hand of course, through **your** eyes an' **your** memories, and then she **knew** you!

Never mind that your memories were blurred by time, shrouded in the EveryPast. Never mind that her exposure was short, was blunted by your own knowledge of why things had to happen the way they did, 'cause she's the uncrowned queen of France! Exceptions **must** be made!"

More laughter spilled forth, harsh and dying, in the silent pulsing light of the Time Rotor. Her body shook (hysterical_, he noted distantly) as her laughter was edged with shrieks, her fingers gripping onto her elbows for dear life. He wanted to go to her, wanted to grab her and hold her, like always, but he didn't dare. He knew she'd spurn his touch and he couldn't bear another of her rejections. Coward, him, every time; especially when she needed him to be the hero._

Finally, laughter petering out, Rose shuffled to the jump seat, shoulders slumped in what the Doctor horrifyingly noted was defeat. His precious Rose. They'd been through so much together, pain and war and hate and no-win scenarios and not once had she bowed to the pressure of the storm. Now, here, in this time and in this place, in her **own home**, she was wilting away as if her sun had been stolen from her. She shifted onto the seat, her eyes looking past him, just over his shoulder, where once she would have blazed into his eyes.

The Doctor's shoulders fell, his hearts squeezed because it had, oh her sun **had** been stolen. The Fleur de Lis had flourished under pilfered light while the Rose shriveled in the cold. He opened his mouth, prepared to say… something, maybe even ask her about that last comment (stupid at the moment, but he'd already found that when it came to Rose, he never did anything right), but Rose beat him to it.

Her voice, so strong and angry before, was soft and wavering now, broken.

"You can't jus' know someone wif a brief glimpse of their mind. It doesn' work like that. You've gotta… experience things wif each other, see things wif your own eyes, hear wif your own ears. Learn how to trust when you don't got the advan'age of bein' on the inside, of knowin' through their mind **why** they do what they do.

It's a cheat, Doctor, and one thin' I learned in school is that when you cheat, the knowledge never lasts. You've copied it from someone else an', for the moment, it's yours. For the moment, you know what they know, but when you leave, when the tests are passed in, you forget. 'Cause it's transient, yeah? When you haven' studied it for yourself, when you haven't **lived** through it yourself, it means nothin'."

She didn't say it, not even now, but it was heavily implied. The words fairly seeped from her pores and the Doctor couldn't even find it in himself to be angry. Shouldn't he be, though? If he'd loved Reinette like he'd thought he did, like he'd acted he did, shouldn't he be furious that Rose was implying that the Madame's intimate knowledge of him, acceptance of him, was false? That it was nothing in the grand scheme of things?

He looked back up to Rose, his eyes bleeding apology, his throat dry and stuck. Rose didn't notice, or didn't allow herself to notice, her attention now on the TARDIS doors.

"I've seen you, Doctor. I've stood between you wieldin' a big gun and a Dalek. I saw the darkness, the anger, the hatred… the will to annihilate, deep in your eyes."

Her voice trailed off as her head turned, oh so slowly, towards the Doctor, spearing his eyes with fierce self-righteousness. She continued, let it all spill out indelicately, her words aimed to maim, "Are you saying I flinched?"

The Doctor released a heavy sigh on the words, "Rose, her being special does not in anyway devalue who you are and what you've done for me."

A bitter smile streaked across her smeared red lips, her teeth peering through to abuse the delicate flesh once again.

"Doesn't it?" Her eyes, big and round and finally, **finally** showing some emotion, well with tears. The Doctor felt horrible for being relieved at this show of pain, but it at least meant that she wasn't too far gone, that he maybe could bring her back to him. Maybe.

"Of course not, Rose! Didn't you learn that with Sarah Jane? She once traveled with me and she is just as special to me now as she was then! Doesn't that mean anything?"

Rose chuckled, lowly and dispiritedly. She dragged one of her sleeves across her face, absorbing the tears there. The Doctor had a vague feeling that he'd made a bad move (but what else was new?). Rose's form shifted on the jump seat, the usually unnoticeable friction sounds echoing loudly, accusingly, in the still of the control room.

"You remember what I asked you, then? At the chip shop, with Sarah Jane an' K9 an' Mickey? Do you remember what you said to me, after I asked if you would ever leave me behind?"

A razor chill crept down the Doctor's spine as he cast his mind back a week. Those words, words that had been ripped from the core of his being when she'd accused him: "No! Not to you."

Rose spoke the words along with the Doctor and it'd been a long time since he'd been frazzled enough to speak without thinking first.

"You say you won't leave me, Doctor. An' then you do. You tell me that I don't know what it's like to watch someone I **love**, Doctor, that was gonna be the word you used, someone I love wither an' die, that you can't allow yourself too close 'cause of that. An' then what do you, Doctor? Tell me. What do you turn around an' do?"

The Doctor took in a breath, stuttering, clogged by the tears trained over centuries never to fall. He looked down, then up, into Rose's eyes, giving her the respect he'd just recently deprived her of. "I invite Reinette along, with romance in my thoughts." He was too far gone to care that his voice had cracked. He was too angry, too ashamed at himself to play the mighty Time Lord with Rose now. Those last words, they'd shattered his illusion. Shattered it into a million, tiny little pieces of his hearts.

A pretty girl, albeit sophisticated, paid attention to him. A famous girl, one who'd done extraordinary things, had staked a claim, and this body's impetuousness had reacted to being the object of desire for such a creature. In so doing, he'd ruined what he'd had with a beautiful woman; for a tiny, nonsense crush. The Doctor smiled bitterly to himself. Funny, how in retrospect, one can see clearly once more. Reinette, nothing but a little girl, playing at importance; thinking her power is anything but related to whom she fucks. Rose, a woman in a woman-child's body, flawed, yes, as all creatures are, but a true woman. One who can face what they've faced and **laugh**. One who can watch the man she loves swan off after another girl and not let it affect her until the trouble's over. One who can give her devotion to one man at a time, especially when she says she's in love. Why is it that hindsight is 20/20?

Rose continued on, not realizing that he'd broken, that the delusion bubble he'd put around himself had popped. She continued on, her rant growing quieter as she grew eerily calmer. The Doctor didn't dare interrupt, didn't want to. She was allowed this, she had a right to this. He would let her have her say. He dreaded how it would inevitably end, though. He may not be an expert on human emotion (are examples really needed?), but one thing he did know. It never boded well when an angry human got uncannily calm.

"I'm not gonna pretend to know everything, Doctor, but what I do know? What you felt for her was at best infatuation, at worst, hero-worship. 'Cause you did nothing but wax poetic on how accomplished she was, how famous — like a bloody history book!" Her voice rose on the last two words, splintering like her heart had done, before she calmly cleared her throat and continued.

"No wonder you don't know what love is, Doctor. You've spent your entire life runnin' from it, from the 'shackles' it represen'ed. So when it's in your face, when it's compared to glamour, an' riches, an' splendor, an' sensual experience, it pales. No, you an' Reinette deserved each other, Doctor. 'Cause in the end, neither of you knew what was important. You had to save her to save history, yeah? But that's not why you did it. You were entranced, full of apotheosis for a wonderful historical figure (the Doctor wasn't quite sure if he'd actually heard her hiss, 'Yeah, I know big words too!'), an' you let that take you over. An' she, well, she left a husband who, by all accounts, loved her, who adored her, to become a glorified whore. An' for what? For power, for status… for some of the most unimportant, intangible things in the universe."

Entrance, another word the Doctor didn't need to look up but did.

—verb (used with object), -tranced, -tranc•ing.  
1. to put into a trance: to be hypnotically entranced.

Hypnotism. Not something universally known to allow freewill. The Doctor dropped the book, heard it land with a dull _k-thunk!_ on the grate floor. He leaned his head back and stared and stared and stared into the pulsing green of the Time Rotor. Why not? He had nothing better to do.

_"I'm not a boomerang, Doctor. I'm a livin', breathin', **feelin'** human bein'. There's only so many times you can toss me away before I stop comin' back. I've got more self-respect than that. An' Doctor, you've tossed me away **so** much since Christmas... I know you're damaged, that you're hurtin'. So you take what you can, while you can. But life isn't a one way street. You've gotta give too. Havin' two hearts doesn't mean you love more'n anybody else. It doesn't mean you can pick an' choose your moments, toss aside one person for another. It just doesn't._

You're previous self understood that. Why don't you?"

She'd never compared him to his ninth self, not once. Until now. Until the Clusterfuck of Doom. He slid slowly to the cold, metal floor. His knees pulled up and he dropped his head down. It was over. He didn't want to see her walk away. Because she'd once promised him forever.

The TARDIS was silent as the grave, even the hum of its mechanics hushed. The lights, but for the ghoulish glow from the Rotor, off. There was no distant singing down the hall, no stocking feet scooting over the hard grills. There was no shout of 'do you wan' tea, Doctor?' echoing down the halls. There wasn't much of anything, really, except an old man who had thought he would have learned a little something of good behaviour by now. He wondered if this is how the whole Valeyard thing started. He wouldn't be surprised. Loneliness breeds contempt and all that. Or maybe he's mixing his metaphors, who cares. This body was good at that, mixing things up.

A sardonic smile curled around the Doctor's lips, an unfamiliar feeling, even bastardized as it was, when something occurred to him. A friend from school once told him that when he screwed up, he screwed up big. It used to be funny.


	2. Sequel Announcement

For those of you who do not know, there is a sequel to _in-fat-u-a-tion_ in my list, called _rep-a-ra-tion. _


End file.
